Here’s another experiment: Stand at the corner of any city street and look upwards for a while. You will notice people around you also look upwards. They want to know what you are looking at, and for that brief period you determined the direction of their attention.
If I tell a group of people to think of a red car, there is a great likelihood that all of them will do it. And if I tell them not to think of a red car… they will also think of a red car! They could have chosen to think of a blue mountain instead. From that you realise how easy it is to steer mass attention.
Rarely will anyone form their own thought or choose different than what they are told. In fact, if you do not make decisions and intentions, someone else will do it for you. You know this from your own life: If your spouse asks you where you want to go for dinner and you don’t really have any specific preference, then they will decide where to go. The same applies on a mass-scale.
Due to a general weakness of will and awareness, most people have their reality decided for them, with merely the illusion of choice given – such as being able to choose whether you will pay your taxes by credit card or bank wire.
In school, children do not learn how to think but what to think. They do not learn how to steer attention but instead various things they are supposed to steer attention to.
It is humbling to realise that
most people on the planet do not practice focusing, guiding,
re-directing, shifting, retrieving and un-sticking their own attention.
Thus the life-experience of most of us is determined by external agendas
as given by mass media, schools, our parents and countless other
sources that have very little to do with our innermost heart’s truth....<<<Read More>>>...
